Thursday, December 21, 2006

Howdy, so where did I get to, ah yes, Airlie beach - the gate way to the Whitsunday Islands.

We went on a 3 day boat trip round the Islands with an absolute cracker of a group (38 in total, so I won't go into detail!). I was looking forward to soaking up the glorious sunshine, unfortunately we weren't that lucky! We picked the 3 days when the heaven's opened and decided to piss it down.

After some sailing round the Islands, we parked up at one Island (Molle Island I think!) and set up camp. We then got the guitar out and the Irish amused us with Irish folk songs, as well as the classics! When we headed off (at 6.30 the next morning!!) none of us quite had our witts about us (that might have something to do with the many litres of goon drunk the night before) so we forgot to zip up all the doors on the tent. One group didn't even put the waterproof layer on! I'll get to that later!

So then we went to head towards Whitehaven Beach, a beautiful pure white beach with clear blue sea, except I wouldn't know, coz we never made it!!! The wind and driving rain ruined that plan, so we just floated around a bit trying not to be sick!! We did manage to fit in some snorkling on the reef in our lovely stinger safe suits: Me feeling like a ninja, so deciding to have a fight with becky on the beach, only to be dump tackled and have sand thrown at me, talk about beating someone when they're down!!


So that night we headed back to the base camp. The ship moored out to sea, and we travelled to shore on a little dingy. Climbing from the boat to the dingy isn't normally too complicated a proceedure, but when you've had a couple of glasses of goon, and you want to save your flip flops, it can prove problematic, as becky found out, when she went flying from the side of the dingy and completely under the water with her bag & all!! None of us knew whether to laugh or jump in after her, until she popped up again in histerics shouting "man over board!!!" Luckily she had dry clothes on the Island!

Not everyone did though!! Sleeping bags and clothes were soaked, and tents were completely blown away (I like to think it was the strong winds, rather than our shoddy camping skilss, ooops!!!) Our tent was pretty bashed, but we managed to rescue it and dry it out a enough to sleep in. Once you've had enough goon, you don't really care anymore!!

Puja, myself and becky wearing the Irish boys hurling shirts. (becky also managed to rescue her hat when she went night swimming!)

After Airlie we headed on to Hervey bay to go on another 3 day trip, this time on a 4x4 round the Island, which I got to drive, whoop whoop! I felt like James Bond (I don't think JB ever drove a 4x4, but I felt cool anyway!).

The first day we went for a stroll in the rainforest, and ended up at a beautiful Lake (we spent a lot of time on the Island swimming in beautiful lakes, so I'll try not to bore u!)

Then we drove along the beach, which was pretty sweet, and went to a little village, where we stocked up on beautiful bow (strongbow, for those not in the know!). We then drove to another beautiful lake for another swim, and headed back through the rough back to set up camp!

This is our group, they were awesome crack! Especially the two welsh guys (Ricky the fox) -the one who looks like Ricky Gervais 2nd in on left, and Scott, the guy kneeling. These guys kept me amused with drinking games, bow, and the best of all beach cricket and beach Golf with a spade:

The next day we went and floated down a freshwater creek, into the sea:

Then drove up the beach (that was awesome fun! managed to get the beauty up to 100km/h, till the back street drivers started noticing!)

We stopped off at an old wreck on the beach:


Then did some lunging practice up at Indian Head:

I also managed to convince the fox to do a Ricky Gervais Impression

and went for a quick swim in the Champagne pools. I was hoping for a pool where they offered you glasses of champagne, but alas it was rock pools where the foamy sea water flowed over like champagne overflowing, a pretty good substitue!

Our last day we went to Lake Mckenzie, which was absolutely beautiful! Much better than Whitehaven Beach in my opinion!!

Then, unfortunately, I had to give my Car back! And after a reunion that evening with our group, back on the bow, we headed on to the next stop on our whistlestop tour...Brisbane....

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